Too much wine
by planet p
Summary: AU; Miss Parker has had too much wine, but perhaps that was a mistake with Lyle staying over. Lyle/Emily
1. Chapter 1

**Too much wine** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

She's had too much wine, of course. Though she's not really sure _how much_ wine would be classed as _too much_ wine, exactly, in her case. She can drink, after all. She thinks that maybe, had Raines _really_ been her father – which she does not believe he is, or ever was, dah – then maybe she'd have inherited the alcohol thing off him.

Anyway, she's had too much wine, and now she's standing in the guestroom, where she'd sent her brother to sleep, and wondering if he'd just gone out, or if he'd gone home. Personally, she'd have liked the gone home thing, but she knows her new _Tower_ psychiatrist wouldn't, which is all that counts, apparently. She wants to stay on Jarod's retrieval team, and apparently so does Lyle, but one of them won't be, unless they learn to do what the shrink says, which is something along the lines of quietly hate one another, but never _loudly_, and never so that it gets back to their – her – psychiatrist.

She leaves the guestroom, flicking the light switch on her way out, so that the light is no longer running, and heads down the staircase in as steady a manner as she can muster, wondering when Jarod will ring, and what he will think when she tells him her brother is sleeping over – the one who shot Kyle; not Ethan, the insane, sane one – but she's just got to wait for Jarod to ring to find out, she supposes, and stomps into the lounge room. "Why do you have those stupid beads?" she asks him of the string of wooden beads on his right wrist, which she's just now noticed, and he looks around.

"Your real brother had them, so I figured I'd at least try to look authentic," he says.

"Ethan doesn't wear children's jewellery!" she snaps.

"Your real twin," Lyle rephrases. "The one who's dead, which is why you got me instead, because he's dead."

She sways a bit when she steps into the lounge room, and it isn't a bit threatening, just pathetic, and she feels sorely, but manages to hiss, "What are you talking about?" in a fairly angry manner.

"The one mummy and daddy had sent to Africa to be 'helped,'" Lyle tells her, and she wonders, through her anger, for a moment, why he can't just say 'mommy,' or if he's being deliberately difficult.

"I don't know what you're on about," she says, annoyed, "but I'll be sure and relay your inconfidence to my shrink."

"I don't think that's a word, actually," Lyle tells her, "and you do, in fact, know what I'm talking about. You've never believed that I was your real brother, and you'd be right. You see, when you were about four, you had an imaginary friend, and _he_ was your real brother, but you stopped seeing him, and you put him out of your mind, you were so _angry_, but he was dead, and that doesn't seem a very nice thing, considering." He frowns. "Does it?"

Miss Parker's hand finds her gun, but Lyle just shrugs.

"I was told they were his," he says, as though he never truly believed it, in any case. "You don't remember, hmm? That's too bad, really."

Miss Parker rips her hand from her gun and storms across the room, right up to him, and raises a hand, as though to slap him, but he just keeps staring at her.

"Mmm, I didn't think so," Lyle replies, though she made no comment, or question, and glances past her, to a photograph on the mantelpiece.

* * *

She should have slapped him, she thinks, later, but then she'd have probably have lost her balance and tumbled over her feet and flew at him, which she is sure he would have _liked_, so maybe it was for the best, in the end.

"Say we're to cooperate wholly; then how am I going to win?" Lyle asks, when he walks into her bedroom at three o'clock.

Miss Parker's face is nothing but a glare, but she says anyway, "How am I supposed to know?"

"Your little girlfriend, from boarding school, the one you thought you'd staked – that was me! They raised her from the dead, and I put her back in the ground. You shouldn't play with things that are dead."

Before she knows it, she's up and her gun's pointed at his head.

"Thought you were awake," he says, smiling. (And she wants to blow his brains out just then.) "But, you see, we come to a problem, now," he continues, as though she's harmless and the gun in her hand is harmless, which neither of them are. "The Center wants that Healer, and you're the last link to it. It Healed you for a reason, sugar dust. Think about it. If we could get that Healer, maybe we could both win."

She wants to shoot him doubly for the nickname – she _needs_ to shoot him – but she knows that'd only get her deeper into trouble, and that's something she can't afford, at this point, so she lowers the gun, and it feels as though it's against her will.

She's heard Sydney talk about the Healer, but she'd never imagined that she was one of the girls who'd been Healed, nor that her best friend, whom she'd seen killed when the getaway car they'd stolen had lost control on black ice, had lived beyond that day.

Again, she feels the urge to murder her brother, but she concedes to the fact that he has a point. "Why Heal us both? I had Center ties, but why Mimi? What ties did she have?" (It's a relevant question, she supposes.)

Lyle frowns. "If she'd been important," he begins, then stops. _She'd have lived when he'd taken her out_, he doesn't say. "Tell me about the Healers that they had?"

Miss Parker doesn't know how he figured out that her boarding school was a T-Corp façade, or that she was the operative that'd been Healed, she'd not even fully acknowledged it herself, she'd only heard conversations, not definitive proof, but she hasn't the time for such thoughts, she needs to think faster, better; she needs to outwit him. "They were like all Healers, I suppose. I don't know much about them; Pretenders are my thing."

"You're a Pretender with the Inner Sense."

She's not sure if it was a question or not, so she stays passive.

"Mimi was your Mediator. She was your secondary."

A frown crosses her face, and she makes no move to wipe it away. "Did you find this out when you infiltrated T-Corp? Why don't you tell me about the Healers you've met? I'm sure you'd know much more than I!"

"We're looking for a rogue Healer," Lyle tells her, bristling. She's veering of topic, and he doesn't like it. It's wasteful, and she's wasting his time.

"How can you be so sure?" she chances, raising her voice at the end. She remembers the way he said her best friend's name, as though it was something foreign to him. "What did you know her as?"

"What?" He's confused, actually confused, and she feels it like an encouraging pat on the back.

"Mimi: What was she to you? What name did you know her by?"

"Lin," he answers quickly. Then just as quickly, "I don't see how that is pertinent to the discussion at hand."

She smiles; for now, for a short time, she's won. "No, you're right; it isn't," she tells him.

"She's dead," Lyle says, his voice firmer than before. "Tell me who would want to Heal you?"

"If they knew," she muses, "Jarod, Sydney… Daddy, Momma…" _Mandy Alice…_ She struggles to think of others that she'd known, but, of course, she finds fault in her list immediately: Her mother was dead by then.

"What about the girl? Could it have been her?"

She shakes her head, feigning a keener agitation to her confusion.

"The Mediator," Lyle supplies.

She wonders why he's suddenly taken to calling her anything but by her name. (As though if he said it three times, by the light of the full moon, her ghost would return to seek revenge. But it isn't full moon.) "If Mimi had been a Healer, I stand assured that T-Corp would have known," she tells him. It is all she can give him; it is the truth. "Was that your big hope? Dashed?"

Lyle makes a face. "Your handler: He, she, or it?"

_Mandy Alice._

"She," she replies with a curling smile. He really didn't know much about T-Corp if he was speculating that her handler that been an 'it,' and he was the 'expert,' too!

He's thinking, so he has on a frown. "A Reaper?"

She nods; she has no need to speak.

"So it wasn't the Handler." He says it like it's hard and fast, and she can't help but respond. (She thought he'd have been more sceptical.)

"It isn't likely." It's not an _impossibility_, it's just not a _general occurrence_.

He laughs, and she's not sure whether to smile or not. It gives her a strange feeling.

She wants to ask whether he's ever imagined it remotely possible, that a Reaper could Heal, but he waves his hand as though to move onto the next question, and now she's sure of the strange feeling. It's something he doesn't care for, and were it possible, he wouldn't want to know about it.

She wonders why that is.

"Your twin is dead. Do you concur?"

She stops, stops moving, thinking, stops breathing, and stares at him. "You just told me that he was," she says.

"I'd hardly say 'just,'" he responds.

She has to shake her head. "What are you asking? Did I feel anything especial when I was Healed? Like maybe it was my _dead twin_ who Healed me?" She laughs, and the sound is more high-pitched than she intends. "No!" She wonders if she's angry.

"How well do you know Angelo?"

The next time, her laugh is _purposely_ high. He's absolutely mad if he thinks Angelo is a Healer!

"He is a T-Corp acquisition, of low level Empathy…"

This is something that Miss Parker didn't know. She imagined a family for Timmy/Angelo; a family who'd grieved his disappearance and still held hope that he would return. "I guarantee that he is not a Healer," she tells him, but leaves out the part where he is a Reaper.

"Mr. Parker was classified as a non-possessor, Catherine was dead… Dot, dead; father… dead…"

Miss Parker is frowning, staring at him intently. 'Just because you don't know doesn't mean someone's dead!' she wants to admonish him, but maybe he _does_ know. She feels her chest tighten. Dot can only be Dorothy, and Raines isn't dead, and it's he who says he's her – their – father. "You know who my father is? You know that he's dead?" She's yelling, but she only realises it as his eyes change their focus, returning to her face.

"So that must mean he's… Jacob, what, or Fenigore?" He smiles, then stifles a laugh. "He's not Carter, I'd hazard a guess. If he's to be a possessor, he'd likely be Jacob; the others didn't possess."

"Who are you?"

Her question stops his rambling, and the smile. "Excuse me?" he asks.

"I want to know who you are?" she says firmly. If he's _not_ her brother, then _who_ is he is assume that position. Who the _Hell_ is he to even presume that he can just waltz in and claim that he's her brother, and have her _just_ swallow it!

"I don't understand," Lyle says, at a loss for anything else to say.

She can _see_ his confusion, though he's not making a big thing of it, but she doesn't care. "You're not my brother, so _what_ are you!" she screams. She's had it; she's _so_ had it with his _games_!

He blinks, then turns away from her slowly, as though this mind was only just catching up to the fact though his body had already decided its course of action and firmly set itself to it. "I'm going," he says, and _she's_ not going to stop him.

"I'm going to win," she says, when she hears the sound of his car starting up outside, in her front yard. (She's never going to help him, if the possibility existed or not, because _he's_ going to lose.)

* * *

Drifting into sleep, she wonders if it was her twin – her real twin – who'd Healed her; if he was alive, still. (He'd have Healed Mimi that first time because he'd have known about her through her – his twin sister – but maybe he'd not known about her the second time, because they'd been parted by then.)

She really wants to believe that her twin is still alive – and that he isn't Lyle – so, just for a moment, _she does_.

She smiles, and then she's sleeping.


	2. Chapter 2

It's the hardest thing letting it go, but he feels more and more that the past is coming to a close; a new future opening up. In this new future, he has to be certain his family is safe, has to be certain _they_ will go on. (It's the one thing that's ever meant anything to him, through all of his personalities.)

He doesn't close his eyes, but he turns away. Why does it have to hurt this way? He can hardly hear himself when he speaks, "Go."

Jarod doesn't buy it, because he doesn't move.

Lyle turns to him with a frown. He tries to be calm about it, but he's shaking. (If he has to choose, it will always be his sister; it will always be his sad song, but this time the choice is harder than that.) "Go." He hears Bobby in his voice, then, in the beseeching quality lying just below the surface, and he wants to cry. Why can't Jarod just _go_!

(He never wanted to hurt Bobby, he's the closest thing to Miss Parker's brother that's left.)

He can't say it again.

By his expression, Jarod's probably calculating angles, variables; trying to figure out his latest tack.

It's only when he feels himself changing that he realises what he's doing.

The door opens without having to be touched.

He wants to giggle, and cry. (He's not, not, not _that_! He's _not_!)

He smiles.

Jarod lurches, and runs.

The door closes behind him, slowly, and the sharpened teeth, the darkened fingernails, recede.

The smile slips away. He will need to face his sister now; he will need to win back the Tower's confidence in her; he will need to deliver the Healer they're looking for.

He fights back his natural response to that. (He's not going to laugh, or cry. He's going to be exactly what she expects; he's going to be Lyle.)

* * *

Miss Parker says nothing; there's nothing _to_ say. She can't shoot him; she walks out.

She's going to get Jarod, with or without his assistance. In fact, she's starting to think it'd be better if she recommended his removal from Jarod's retrieval team.

She wonders if the Tower will back her or Lyle.

* * *

He knows what he has to do to pull it off; he knows he'll have to give up, let go, but he's ready. This time, he's ready. He doesn't calculate that he'll have to go back all the way, but at least as far as Bobby.

Now, he needs Bobby's permission.

He makes the call.

And then Bobby is just there; inside.

* * *

He doesn't know what they would have looked like, or sounded like; what they would have been like; he can't know that.

He falls back on an old certainty; he'd borrowed his friend's identity before, and now he needs to do it again.

Corporeal projection is Bobby's ability, and it's perfect.

The Healer part will be _his_ contribution, with luck.

* * *

He's just sitting there, drinking whiskey from a tumbler, when she walks into her lounge room.

Miss Parker doesn't even take her gun out, it's too absurd. (She doesn't know who he is, but she knows he's not Jarod. She should have taken her gun out.)

He laughs and coughs. "This stuff's nasty," he tells her honestly. He places the glass tumbler down beside the bottle of whiskey on the little table and stands.

Miss Parker starts to lift a hand, as though to motion that he not try to approach her, but he holds out his hand.

"Dor."

"This is my house," Miss Parker says, irritated, as though it's easier to imagine that he's just had too much to drink and confused her house for his own, or maybe he's mentally ill, but not that he's been sent, or entered her house of his own accord, to harm her.

Dor smiles. "It is a well kept house," he tells her.

Miss Parker shakes her head. "That's not a name," she declares, suddenly certain of this fact.

He lowers his hand, figuring she's not going to shake it, anyway. "From Theodore," he supplies.

She starts to form a word, then frowns. She backs away.

"I intend you no harm," he tells her.

It hits her then, why she hasn't drawn her gun. "You're my brother," she says.

A nod answers. "I'm the back up plan, no, older sister?" He smiles.

She shakes her head, unsteady. "No," she says, hearing her own voice rise underneath her.

"You must win back their confidence, older sister," he tells her flatly.

She takes out her gun without any clear picture as to why.

"We will not tell them that we are sister and brother," he suggests, catching her eye, as though he believes that this small concession might comfort her.

She puts a hand to her face, then puts her gun away. She can't think. She hurries toward him and pulls him into an embrace. ('Please don't leave this my only option,' she wants to whisper.)

She's seen the Tower's recommendation, and it's not backing Lyle, but it's not backing her either. (Its recommendation is that Lyle be reassigned and she undergo re-education.)

"I thought you were someone else," she whispers by way of an apology.

* * *

She trusts him completely, and it makes him feel as though he's doing something unlawful.

He hasn't tried to trick her, not to the extent that she seems to have been taken in by the act, and it scares him. He can't feel good about its success with that hanging over him; he expected resistance, at least, but there has been none. (He's not _that_ good, and he doesn't want to deceive _her_.)

They talk about the plan together, and he can feel how happy it makes Bobby. (She's not angry at him, she's listening to him; she wants to help; she _trusts_ him.)

It's _just_ like he imagined!

For now.

It's going to hurt later on, and Lyle can't escape the feeling of failure. (He'd promised to never let anyone hurt Bobby again, but he can't help it now, it's going to happen.)

Bobby is so proud to be able to help their sister, finally, but Lyle doesn't let the false security in; it can't comfort him now. (He feels the tenuous divide more acutely, between Bobby and Noah, between life and a living death. _He's_ the adult, and he won't _let_ that happen!)

It is only then that he begins to feel Bobby's strength, and his new determination. Before, he'd been eager to give up his control, he couldn't get away fast enough, now, Lyle feels, he'll be willing to fight it if Lyle tries to back down on helping Miss Parker. (Perhaps it's his bipolar disorder exerting itself, but it frustrates Lyle.)

He still has to live, somebody has to protect their family. (Miss Parker may be strong, but she's not yet strong enough to detach herself from the Center and stand behind their _true_ family, not even with Molly's strength. She's not equipped to handle that.)

He wishes, more than anything, then, to be able to tell her everything; the truth, but that's not an option.

Not now.

Maybe not ever.

* * *

That's when it becomes apparent whose side Bobby is on, and it's not his. He tells her how their mother is alive, how their father is well, for now, and how Ethan is not their half brother, but that he shares both of their parents, mother and father. He tells her of the child that they share, without flinching, and of her clone. (He backs away from including their clone; the child looks just like them.) He tells her of Dorothy, and that she passed, long ago.

Jarod is family, he tells her, because of Emily's children. (For some reason, this makes Lyle angrier than anything else. Bobby had no right putting his Convergence partner in danger, but he'd gone right ahead and done it, and their children along with their mother. They're _his_ children, not _Bobby's_, including Aster!)

_Go ahead, why don't you say it!_ Lyle bristles, so Bobby does.

He tells her that her best friend is alive, and there is the reason that she'd been Healed, too. (She is his Convergence partner; she is Emily.)

There is no answering peel of laughter, because Miss Parker believes him; she believes Dor, her _real_ brother.

"Did you Heal our mother?" Miss Parker asks.

"I'm not _that_ good!" Dor tells her, with a smile.

_And I'm still not_, Lyle thinks, _still not good enough_.

* * *

**Too much wine** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	3. Chapter 3

For God sake, he tells himself, Bobby is not his _brother_, he is another part of him. He needs to get over feeling as though Bobby's his younger brother; Bobby knows what he's doing, he probably knows what he's doing better than Lyle does himself. (Though it's not Bobby's opinion, in _Lyle's_ opinion, everything about Bobby is perfect. He's the one with _real_ feelings; he's the one who'd never hurt someone he loved the way he's done all along. He's smart and funny, and beautiful.)

He suppresses a laugh. What a load of crap! Maybe, if he'd been _fucking hideous_ daddy would have thought twice about turning to him when mummy said, 'no thank you, not today.' Maybe, if he hadn't liked hugs, or if he'd hit the other kids at school, or swore, or walked around with the kitchen knife; maybe then daddy would have beat the crap out of him, and never thought of doing anything else.

He can't help but laughing. Oh God, what is he thinking! (Maybe he should have _made_ himself hideous and fucked up; yeah, cos that'd helped their mother _so_ fucking well!)

He finds a corner in his townhouse and sits in it.

Oh fuck, oh fuck!

He laughs.

Oh fuck, they can bring on anything they want, and they'd get nowhere! He isn't Bobby; he is strong!

* * *

Tazu's head is rested on his arm when he wakes, and he makes an effort to appear okay. He can't take his shitty mood out on Taz; she's his _friend_. (A _real_ bloody friend, shocked.)

He decides that the floor's pretty crap, so he takes her to the couch. She's dead, but so bloody what? She's real to him, and he's real to her, he reckons. (_No, she's not dead; she's different!_ he reprimands himself. _Idiot._ She's not some virus-animated corpse from so many zombie flicks, or the latest talking plastic doll with fifteen realistic, 'life-like' phrases – she's a _real_ person, with real feelings. At least, she was a real _human_ person, and now she's… what… an energy form with personality? He can't care less what someone else may call her, in truth.)

He hums _She Will Be Loved_, her latest favourite song, and wonders how he could be so shitty that he couldn't even catch onto the identity of her killer, and, given that it wasn't just her who'd been killed, it was fucking _laughable_.

Whoever said he'd been 'spectacular' ought to be shot, he thinks.

Yeah, he's spectacular – a spectacular fuck up!

* * *

Dor has gone away, presumably as part of 'the plan.'

Lyle makes an effort to care; he can't leave it all to Bobby.

Miss Parker is angry at him when he gets into work, still on the Jarod thing. He wonders why she can't let it go, so he decides to let it go for her, and walks away on her. She gapes after him, or maybe that's a _glare_, but doesn't follow.

He's not cutting her any slack for showing Dor some of her fabulous generosity; she's not showing him anything but a bad attitude, and guess what, he's got one to match hers, God it's all so _twin-y_!

* * *

He walks to the coffee room and sets about making himself a coffee. He doesn't care if it's not his thing. He needs something, before he loses it.

Yeah, so he knows it's not him she was chumming up to, technically, but it's hard to just go from trusting to _So why is it _him_ getting the transfer and me getting the personality transplant? Who did he chum up to, and when can I waste him?_

The coffee gives him hiccups, and even if it's all just in his mind, it annoys him. Why not? He can't even have a friggin' coffee, now!

_Aw, shit!_

He looks up Jack's number in his cell phone and hits the button to call. He needs to tell her _something_, at least.

He asks her if they could meet, then feels bad for the unnecessary risk-taking.

He finishes the coffee and leaves the mug in the sink. He leaves the room.

* * *

"Are you just going to leave that there?" Fulton asks.

He stops outside the door and curses himself for not noticing that she'd walked in, then turns and walks back into the room. "What do I look like to you, the cleaning staff?" he bites back, annoyed.

That's another thing.

He's fed up with her, too!

He walks over to her and backs her into the wall and kisses her. He steps away from her, after a moment, and turns and walks out. At the door, he doesn't turn around, but says, with a tinge of sarcasm, "Have a pleasant day!"

Fulton doesn't respond. In her position, he doesn't think he would, either.

The sob she gives makes him freeze. He wishes she wouldn't, but he can't stop her now. It's his own fault.

He turns, walks back to the coffee room. He closes the door behind him quietly. He has to say something nice to her now.

She's not a bad person, he thinks, she's just got herself caught up in the bad people's crappy schemes to be even bigger bad people.

She doesn't shove him away when he offers to hold her, and he figures that's an encouraging fact. It was just him, after all, who brought all of the world's unfairness crowding back in. _Kid, kidnapped; kids, dead; husband… cheating, crazy, liar, killer, who knows… work, unfair; bills, overdue library books, poison in the water… not another war, oh please…_

"I'm sorry," he whispers into her hair, but he's not, he's just a good liar.

Tazu stands by the door, watching. (She doesn't clue on to the lie, and he only feels worse.) She walks over and strokes Fulton's hair. (Fulton doesn't doubt, she is whole and in colour; invisible, but to Lyle.)

He would have smiled, but he's not in the mood.

* * *

She's wearing a nametag telling him that her name is Kelly, though it's not – it's really Emily – and a purple dress. It's not her colour, but it's a nice dress, and it looks all the nicer that it's on her.

He doesn't tell her this, but he hugs her. It's lame, but he can't help it.

"You look nice," he tells her quietly, "truly."

"So do you," she whispers back.

He doesn't smile, though she is. Maybe he's feeling off because her smile usually does strange, supernatural things to him, but today its bewitching power is tired, clouded.

Oh God, she's going to think him mental, but he can't let that stop him.

"I love you."

She laughs. He can feel it. (What did he expect, he wonders.) Then she says, "No you don't!"

He can't figure if she's being annoying, or if he's scared her. "Yes, Emily, I do," he replies.

She pulls away from him as though he'd hit her. "Don't call me that!" she cries, scolding.

He gazes back at her solidly. "Emily." It's her name.

Tears leak into her eyes, but he doesn't move to take her in another hug. "Don't ever call me _that_!" she hisses.

He smiles. "Emily." How can he help it? He's scared he's done something to her, something irreversible and bad.

"You're not allowed to call me that!" she hollers.

"'Allowed'?" That does it then, because he turns around, without a word, and walks away. If she had loved him, too, she'd have said so; she'd not have contested him. So now he's not _allowed_ to call her by her name. He tells himself that she'll follow; that she'll tell him that he's wrong.

But she doesn't.

Maybe his heart breaks a little, he can't tell. (They say that he doesn't have a heart.)

* * *

**Too much wine** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


	4. Chapter 4

**I'm not so good with this tense; I keep changing to third person and have to go back and correct, so annoying.**

* * *

She's standing in a trance, staring at nothing really, when someone takes her arms and turns her about. She's not scared – it's Jarod, she sees – but maybe, considering the anger in his face, it would be wise adopting a bit of wariness.

"What are you doing?" he growls in a low grumble. He can't raise his voice, but he's _angry_.

She stares at him.

Has he ever been in love? Does he even know how stupid it is, sometimes?

She struggles in his grasp, but it gets her nowhere. She hates the whole stupid town passionately! It's such a stupid, crappy town!

She stops struggling, the part of her that wants to be comforted stronger than the part that wants to run away.

But there's nobody there, nobody holding her arms.

She laughs.

She turns in a circle and heads for the door in a sprint. (It reminds her of boarding school in Canada, running with her best friend.)

* * *

The plaza is crowded, and, by the time she's six steps out of Comet's Coffee, she's confused. "Lyle!"

"Oh, damn." Discovered! A young man approaches from a short distance away; the owner of the voice. "Look, lady, whatever it was, it wasn't-" He stops talking. She's pretty.

Emily waves a hand at him. "I'm sorry, I'm looking for someone else," she tells him, concentrating on keeping her breathing steady.

"Parker, right," the man says. "I'm Porter. Lyle Porter, actually."

Emily stares at him. She's not really interested in who he is, but, for some reason, he's still talking to her. "Mr. Porter, have you seen my husband?" she asks.

Porter frowns. "You're married?" He seems genuinely confused.

"Not anymore," she replies, distracted. He doesn't know anything, she supposes.

A laugh. "Oh, no ring."

Emily makes a face; looks at him properly. "Look, Mr. Porter-"

"You the sister of that chick he wasted? His wife, wasn't it? I thought he wasted her, too? Weren't they… Asian, like?"

She turns and begins to make her way through the crowd. Does she even care for the ramblings of a… a… something? Hardly, at all.

(She's killed people, too. And though she didn't feel good for it – she still doesn't feel good for it – she knows that, if he's to have killed those girls, that they're no different; killers are killers.)

She imagines telling that one to Jarod, how, as a 10-year-old, she'd gotten around killing people with her best friend, his Miss Parker; how the ordinary, plain boarding school they'd attended wasn't so ordinary at all. (How Melody had been good with guns, and she'd been good with knives.)

Oh, and how she'd been punished for Melody's escape; how she'd been sent to an auxiliary of the Center to infiltrate one of their _clever_ projects, only to have it discovered that she wasn't – clever, gifted, or really anything – and how, then, to whom she'd been given as a 'gift.'

He'd have a field day with that!

"Kelly!"

"Leave me be, Mr. Porter."

"I w-wondered if you were okay?"

She spins around; she feels dizzy with the motion. "I am fine, Mr. Porter," she tells him. Why is he following her?

"He's trouble, Kelly," Porter says, not even blushing. "I'd worry for you if you hooked up. His rep's fairly sus."

"Porter! What are you saying about my esteemed associate?"

Porter pulls a face at the young, Asian woman who is owner of the teasing voice and a pricey, designer coat. "Jones may be _thick_ enough to buy into that, but I, on the other hand, am not, Miss Lee."

Lee grins. "You do sophistication so _well_! Insulting the police department _and_ my private fanboy with one stone. If I cared, I'd ask what that was about." She laughs and reaches out a small hand for Emily's hand. She clasps Emily's hand and pulls her away from Porter.

Emily doesn't object. She doesn't know who this woman is, but she's not Porter, who's started to become creepy.

Lee has noticed her small, purple high heels, to match her purple dress, though they're not quite the _same_ shade. She notices that this woman doesn't wear high heels frequently, and wonders who they're for. She smiles as she wonders this. "I'm Midori," she says. "You are?"

She's not sold by the nametag.

"Emily," Emily confesses. She doesn't know if she should have lied, or not.

Lee nods, her gaze changed in a subtle way that says she knows something. "Come with me," she says, and Emily remembers that the small young woman is still holding her hand.

"I wouldn't call it 'private,'" comes Porter's loud voice, behind them. "Everyone knows!"

"Go wank yourself, Porter!" Lee shouts back seriously, and Emily raises a hand to her mouth.

They continue walking.

Porter doesn't bother them again.

* * *

They take the elevator to the underground parking and Lee lets go of her hand to check her iPhone.

Emily tries not to stare.

"I'm the receptionist," Lee tells her as she's looking at something on her iPhone, halfway distracted by it.

"I'm sorry?" Emily says.

"At the Center," Lee adds.

Emily feels a strange chill run through her that's not really cold but reminds her more of insects hording.

Lee puts her iPhone away, finally, inside her expensive, designer coat, and turns to glance at Emily.

Emily notices that her eyes are green, and it's strange because she thinks that's something she would have noticed first off because her eyes are also green, but instead she remembers Lee's eyes being black. "You're a Healer," she says.

Lee doesn't smile, but Emily sees that she's mildly impressed. It's just on her face. "I could have been a Reaper," she replies.

"I don't buy that," Emily tells her.

"You should feel different," Lee says, just putting it out there.

"I'm sorry I disappoint you," Emily responds sarcastically, kind of drably.

Lee's eyes return to black. She shakes her head, her eyes widening in excitement. "You don't disappoint me!"

Emily gets goose bumps. Could this girl be any creepier?

"You're his girl, aren't you?" Lee asks, though it's more like a statement the way Emily hears it. "You're the one."

Emily decides to play stupid. She shakes her head. "What?"

"You have Convergence together, right?" Lee chews her bottom lip a bit. It makes Emily uncomfortable. There's a gleam in her eyes that Emily can't quite trust. Lee smiles, and it feels as though it shouldn't be shared; it's a secret smile. "We call it Happy Sunshine."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Emily tells her.

"It makes Frankie say things like 'zingy,'" Lee confides, with a giggle.

"I don't know who Frankie is," Emily says.

Lee is smiling. "Oh, he's a doctor. Your brother would know him as Cox." She giggles again. "Your brother's cute."

Emily shakes her head.

"You won't tell him I said that, will you?"

"No."

"Frankie's a Healer, too," Lee reveals. "His little sister was murdered."

"By their father?"

Lee nods. "Yes, you've seen the show."

Emily frowns. "His parents say that he murdered her," she points out.

"Lyle says she's still alive; everybody thinks something different," Lee replies, her voice agreeable. She leaps out of the elevator when it comes to a standstill and the doors open into the parking garage.

Emily steps after her. She doesn't speak for a moment, then asks, "Does the Center know what you are?"

Lee shakes her head in answer, 'no.' "Lyle told me he thought I was a Healer; Frankie says he told him, too. He's kind of our expert on all things rival; he's got kind of an 'I know things' complex." Lee shrugs and turns back to face her swiftly. "Where are you headed?"

"I guess I'm leaving town," Emily tells her.

Lee smiles. "You're not staying?"

"My brother's sort of on the Center's Wanted list. I don't think so."

"You don't want to visit your daughter?"

Emily frowns. "She's in town?" She knows this already, but she hadn't known that others did.

"She works at McDonald's," Lee reveals.

Something switches around in Emily's mind, and her voice is suddenly devoid of warmth, "You understand the situation, don't you?"

"Of course I do," Lee hurries to agree, and Emily thinks that her shift in demeanour has startled her.

Can't be helped, she supposes.

"I'll leave you then," Lee begins.

"No. There is something you can do for me," Emily tells her.

Lee doesn't nod, but fixes her attention to her. She doesn't trust her, Emily realises; not the way she trusts Lyle, though every reason for her not to trust him has been thrust into her face for her to examine. She is waiting for Emily to speak.

"Tell him that Jack is sorry. She wasn't thinking, and she said something that she didn't mean." With that, Emily turns and walks away.

* * *

**Too much wine** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.


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